


The Monster Inside Us

by Cieleniti



Series: NCT Oneshots [29]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Academy, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Guess whose the psychopath, Heavy Angst, Mentions of Violence, Mild Blood, Psychological Horror, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, or sociopath, slight hyuckhei
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:01:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26215276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cieleniti/pseuds/Cieleniti
Summary: There were no real rules in the academy, only restrictions. Maybe they were the same, but really, how would Donghyuck know. You could bend and break the rules, but the phrase didn’t really apply to restrictions. It made him feel a tad bit better whenever he roamed the halls at night, his hand dripping red onto the wooden planks as he smeared the walls using his other hand.He had heard that there were no sane people in the academy, or that’s what people said. That would mean they weren’t sane either, insane words spoken from one insane person to another.
Relationships: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung, Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Series: NCT Oneshots [29]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2148876
Comments: 12
Kudos: 23





	The Monster Inside Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [orangypop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangypop/gifts), [dreamthelov](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamthelov/gifts).



> For you angst lovers. Thank you for being my friends on twitter and pushing me to write even more :)
> 
> Also, there will be a lot of WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON moments in this fic (fgs even I'm confused) so feel free to ask for clarification :D

“Hyuckie!”

The voice behind was breathless, fighting for a chance to inhale between pants. His voice didn’t soar far, but Donghyuck could hear. His smaller body could barely outrun the momentum Lucas relied on, pushing forward with as much strength as he could even though he had no idea where he was going. There was something heavy in the air, in a way that made his breath stagger and stutter like an overheated engine.

He didn’t want to be caught.

_“Do you think there’s a meaning behind everything we do here?” Donghyuck asked, peering at his roommate through the reflection on the mirror. Mark gave him a low grunt of dissatisfaction, his fingers clumsily trying to redo his tie. “How far must we go to be perfect?”_

_“There isn’t perfection here, that’s why no one ever gets out until they’re an adult,” Mark scoffed bitterly, casting Donghyuck a pleading glance. Donghyuck hid a smile as he walked over to help Mark out, their faces close enough that he could feel their chilling breaths of snow and winter._

_It was always winter in the academy._

_“Do you think Professor Seo will let us off easily when he finds out?”_

_Donghyuck didn’t feel like answering, especially when the mere thought of it made his heart clench. There was a clear difference between letting off and forgetting. Johnny could always let them off, indeed, but he’d never forget. The mere thought of having eyes on them both made his breath hitch._

_“He won’t find out,” Donghyuck stated albeit too harshly than he should. “He’ll never find out.”_

The snow soaked his socks through and through, the dampness rising from his ankles to his shins. _He_ had always hated the high socks. _He_ had always complained that they were unnecessary, even for a school of extreme etiquette. Besides, it added extra seconds to the time they couldn’t waste, and more than once, they had been punished for being late.

But that was then, but not now.

Time had stopped for Mark, and perhaps, it would stop for him if he could run fast enough, far enough past the boundaries of the academy, away from the lumbering figure of Lucas who was still crying for him to return, wasting breaths that he couldn’t afford to.

Mark had told him he was like a fox, one that would outsmart and run and run and run as long as a path was there, as long as they knew where they were going. Did Donghyuck know where he was going? What else lay beyond the gates other than white snow and towering pine trees? What else had he known other than endless white and coldness that had caged his heart in ice.

He was cold, but Mark was colder. Mark could no longer get warm, could no longer feel heat. Or perhaps, he would never feel cold again. They never taught you what you would feel once your life ended. Only what you would do before.

_There were no real rules in the academy, only restrictions. Maybe they were the same, but really, how would Donghyuck know. You could bend and break the rules, but the phrase didn’t really apply to restrictions. It made him feel a tad bit better whenever he roamed the halls at night, his hand dripping red onto the wooden planks as he smeared the walls using his other hand._

_He had heard that there were no sane people in the academy, or that’s what people said. That would mean they weren’t sane either, insane words spoken from one insane person to another._

_“How far are you willing to go before they catch you?”_

_Donghyuck had looked around, eyes on the boy who was dimply lit by the moonlight that shone through the window. He wore the plain white pajamas of the academy, and seemed to be as young as Donghyuck was. Strange, considering not many youngelings –as the senior students would say –would dare go out at night._

_Alas, the boy perked his attention, even from afar. He was afraid, no doubt. Still, there were better things to be afraid of other than a mere boy with blood on his cheeks and a carcass in his hand._

_“I don’t know,” was what he replied, at that wasn’t a lie either. “How far are you willing to go to know?”_

_The boy shifted his weight from one foot to another, and Donghyuck looked away, humming a lullaby to himself as he walked down the hall._

_“My name is Mark!”_

_He stopped, letting out a sigh before looking over his shoulder at the quivering boy of 14 years old._

_“Well, Mark. Care to walk with me?”_

There was plenty evil in the world, that much made sense.

Lucas was evil for trying to stop him from doing what he was aiming to do. The teachers were evil for breaking the skin on his back. Mark was evil for leaving him. Everyone called him evil, ever since he turned six in 2006. They claimed that it was time for him to be sent away to a boarding school that lasted until he turned 20. He was the youngest, he still was.

“Hyuckie, come back!” Lucas screamed, but the roaring wind quietened his voice. Donghyuck didn’t want to hear. He didn’t want to listen to more evil voices, telling him to do evil things. He’d listen to his own, he’s listen to himself.

Lucas had tried, that Donghyuck knew.

If he had not known better, he would have allowed it to happen, to let the boy slide into the unoccupied seat at the cafeteria and share his piece of lasagna. Donghyuck wasn’t usually one to mope around, even when it was about a boy he had grown fond of for the past decade.

But this was different, because he could still feel the deep cut on his back reopen, staining his white uniform a frightening scarlet. He could imagine it, imagine Lucas squinting through the snow storm and read the words **GOODBYE HYUCK** in his blood, carved over the tattoo of _his_ name.

_“I think it looks beautiful.”_

_Donghyuck had looked up with startled eyes, clutching his crumpled clothes close to his chest as Mark traced the name that had burned itself back onto his back, where a right wing could have sprouted if he were ever to become and angel like the sisters said. But it was comforting, nonetheless, knowing that his own name was branded permanently on Mark’s left back._

_“I wish we could have developed it later, though,” he admitted, pulling on his sweater and grabbing a fistful of bloody tissues on the floor before throwing them into a plastic bag. “You know what the school does to soulmates that develop early.”_

_“Like what happened to Jaehyun and Doyoung?”_

_Donghyuck froze, a breath escaping his lips in a hiss. He didn’t like it when people spoke about it, mainly because he had known them both when he was young. Before he had met Mark at 10, before he had started his habit of leaving blood on the walls._

_“They were different, that’s why the academy did what they did,” he responded lowly, looking away._

_Mark approached him, kneeling on one knee to take his hands in his own. Both were coarse from work and punishment. Both were cold and bloodless and felt like ice. “They won’t do the same to us, then? We’re still children –“_

_“They were children too,” He interrupted, his grip tightening. “I was there. They were children like us, but all the adults could see were the monsters inside them.”_

Was the monster still there? Clawing at his insides and telling him that it was time to feed, time to draw blood and paint the school red? Was the monster still placing a knife at his throat, prompting him to do its bidding?

“Pray for our sins, huh?” he panted, ducking under a tree that went past his head. “What kind of joke is that?”

He had known the moment the words carved themselves onto his back. Going home? At 17? Had he been so blinded…so trustful that Mark could ever break the one tradition that the academy had? He was as perfect as the academy needed them to be, indeed. But so had Doyoung been when Donghyuck had first met him. The way he smiled and charmed the teachers into letting go of his hair. The way he grinned as Jaehyun took him in his arms and they ran down the hallway, cardigans flying behind them.

The way his eyes glinted when he first showed Donghyuck how to wield a knife while Jaehyun played with his lighter, flicking it on and off.

But that hadn’t stopped the academy from making him bleed, him and Jaehyun whose names were burned on each other’s wrists. Donghyuck had been there, hidden within a hollowed out oak bark and peeking through the holes, a hand clamped over his mouth when they had pushed their bodies into the lake.

It was always winter at the academy.

He had been there to hear the principal tell them that they had drowned. He had torn down the posters of their faces and stuffed it into the stomach of the first squirrel he had caught. The monster had caught him then, and he wondered if it was that monster that had made Doyoung who he was.

_Like red wings. They looked like red wings._

_He could feel the way his body spasmed in pain, curling in as if he could hide from the agony. He could see his wings from Mark’s mirror, that reflected his own mirror. The wings were red and beautiful, but Donghyuck found himself hurting._

_Hurting because he knew that under those wings, the only proof he had that Mark was alive had been cut up with his last dying words. That he had foolishly believed that he was going home, that he had managed to be perfect._

_There were no other youngelings on their floor, so Donghyuck screamed. He screamed because the walls were soundproof, a reason no one ever knew he roamed the night. Except Mark, but Mark was gone._

_How had they found him? How far had Mark gone to understand why Donghyuck wrote words on the lockers using blood. Or was Mark just as insane as anyone in that academy? Did he fall apart when Donghyuck missed him most?_

_Yet, the words of evidence were carved onto his back._

The lake had two, no…three monsters. It had drowned three, and it was waiting for one more.

His monster was feeding on his flesh, carving its name onto his heart. His lungs felt cold as he slid down the snowy slope leading to the lake. The lake that was ice cold but never froze over, the lake that held the monsters.

“HYUCKIE!”

Donghyuck was desperate, as he always was and always had been. He needed his other half, for to leave his monster with no lease was to destroy himself before he could destroy the people who killed Mark. Doyoung and Jaehyun were two parts of one monster. Donghyuck was a monster that stood on its own, bubbling under his skin and latching onto the first show of sanity.

That sanity was gone; it had been taken far too soon.

The wings were red on his back as he ran across the bridge that reached to the middle of the lake.

Under his feet was where Doyoung’s blood had smeared itself before the snow covered it with white and washed it away. It was where Donghyuck had seen his eyes blink awake, and seen his hand twitch to reach for Jaehyun when he had been thrown in.

Doyoung could swim, but he never resurfaced. Because their monsters were never meant to be apart.

Neither would theirs.

Donghyuck turned around for a split second and watched as Lucas’s eyes widened when he fell back.

The water was cold, then warm.

**Author's Note:**

> So, it seems that I have made another Markhyuck :) Actually its just me doing another under 2k words challenge Now what did I just write?  
> Class starts tmrw and yes, here is a gift before I get my time taken away hahahah. Thanks so much for reading this fic, and apologies if it is rushed or rather confusing. Do leave comments! I'm trying to reply to them these days and they make me so so happy! Bye~
> 
>   
> [twt](https://twitter.com/Skydancer_8?s=09) | [CC](https://curiouscat.me/Skydancer_8)
> 
>   
> [twt](https://twitter.com/Skydancer_8?s=09) | [CC](https://curiouscat.me/Skydancer_8)


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